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God with us

I’ve been reading the Message Bible recently for a fresh
taste of God’s Word. And, is God’s way
and timing, today I started the book of Mark, as we prepare for Advent – the eager
awaiting of Christ, Mark too was eager to share about His coming.

The good news of Jesus Christ—the
Message!—begins here, following to the letter the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

The notes introducing the Book of Mark include a powerful
statement that strikes a tone in my heart today.

“The
bare announcement that God exists doesn't particularly qualify as news.Most people in most centuries have believed in
the existence of God or gods. It may well be, in fact, that human beings in
aggregate and through the centuries have given more attention and concern to
divinity than to all their other concerns put together - food, housing,
clothing, pleasure, work, family, whatever.”

Oh, this is so
evident, especially in these days.We
ebb and flow through life worried over trivial things alongside the looming
large things, only to stop one day and consider there has to be more to this
life…And we look up and ask “Are you
there?” “Do you care what I’m going through?”

“But that God is here right now, and on
our side, actively seeking to help us in the way we most need help - this qualifies as news. For,
common as belief in God is, there is also an enormous amount of guesswork and
gossip surrounding the subject, which results in runaway superstition, anxiety,
and exploitation.”

Oh, isn’t this so true? We want to believe the news, but resist the
whole of it.And, sadly, if we don’t desire
to get to know God for who He really is, who His Word says He is, we’re likely
to believe anything we hear, or worse, feel.We might begin to press God into a mold, into our own image and worship
the making of our own hands.Isn’t this
what the Israelites did?When God “seemed”
far off, when they had no “connection” (through Moses) to Him, they did, as we
do, in the flurry of feelings, they made a god they could control, ascribed
their own attributes to.The thing about
the god we make – it’s merely an impotent idol, even if we do call it “God”.

“So Mark, understandably, is in a hurry to
tell us what happened in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus -
the Event that reveals the truth of God to us, so that we can live in reality
and not illusion. He doesn't want us to waste a minute of these precious lives
of ours ignorant of this most practical of all matters - that God is passionate
to save us.”

God, the One True
God, loves us so much He wanted to make Himself known to us, so we could know Him rightly, to make a way to
spend eternity together!So, He sent His
one and only Son Jesus – the One all creation had been waiting for, so that we
could have relationship through Him.That’s not only news, it’s GOOD NEWS!

“There's an air of breathless excitement
in nearly every sentence he (Mark) writes. The sooner we get the message, the
better off we'll be, for the message is good, incredibly good:
God is here, and he’s on our side.”

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